European/PAL Release of Catherine Further Delayed

The quirky puzzle game would have come out in Europe this year, but it's now delayed until 2012.

Catherine is a weird little bugger, but the game was mostly well-received by both the gaming press and the public given that the game sold very well given its niche. Unfortunately, that public is limited to the Japanese and North American markets because there was no deal in place for PAL regions which include the U.K., most of Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia. Publisher Deep Silver announced earlier that it would publish Catherine in those regions this year, but that date has been pushed back at least until 2012 at the earliest.

"We are very proud to be able to publish Catherine in all PAL territories as a Deep Silver game", said Deep Silver CEO back when the deal with Atlus was announced in July. "Catherine is something new, fresh and exciting; unlike anything else in the gaming world - a unique mixture of genres. This agreement proves once again that games published under the Deep Silver label are not 'more of the same', 'run of the mill' productions."

All of that sounds great, but it makes me wonder what the hold up is in getting the game into stores in the Europe. I imagine that the pressing of discs with PAL encoding doesn't take that long. Is there some strange market pressures to release the game later?

I've reached out to Atlus for clarification and I'll let you know if I hear anything.